Customer Reviews

Pharmacy College Admission Test (PCAT) (Arco PCAT: Pharmacy College Admission Test)

5 star:		(2)
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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Not much in the way of explanations as to what is covered on the actual PCAT. Would be a stronger review guide if the author listed a breakdown as to the possible topics within chemistry or biology (i.e. perhaps state that "focus more on understanding acid/base reactions"). Gourley devoted too much time to defining the pharmacy profession, providing addresses of pharmacy schools, and the like. The book would have been a great deal more helpful if the author provided more practice tests and a better outline of what to study to prepare for the test. In short, this book is not for the student who is looking for a strong review for the PCAT. It is more for a student who is leaning toward a career in pharmacy and needs information on the field and a PCAT-like practice test so that he/she can decide whether or not to enter the field. I took the actual PCAT recently and had been preparing for the test using Gourley's book as my primary resource. I can honestly say that I felt ill-prepared for the test and that the book did not provide a complete picture as to the nature of the test (i.e. like the background that Baron's, Princeton Review, and Kaplan books provide for other standardized tests such as the SAT, MCAT, GRE). I was very, very disappointed with my purchase of this book.

Avoid this book at all cost. It was completely unhelpful. It does not even have the correct type of verbal ability questions. And has no! practice exam.

I had used Arco, Barron's, and Lippincott Williams&Wilkins to prepare my PCAT. I had found that Arco has tons of practice questions with better explanation in answers while Barron's is similar set up as Arco but the explanation I thought was not as good as Arco. Lippincott Williams&Wilkins has tons of review topics with less practice questions and its answers were in condensed explanation. What really helped was that I had extracted from these three books on why the questions were asked rather than memorizing the question and answers. The Arco book actually contains similar questions as the actual PCAT exams. I was surprised at how well the Arco book prepared me for the actual PCAT. Finally thought is that if you arejust starting to prepare for PCAT, I will start with either LWW (with more review topics) or Barron's (some topic discussion in the answers with more practice questions. But if you are looking into just doing lots of practice questions, I highly recommend Arco. If you learn 70%-80% of why the questions were asked, then you are well prepared for PCAT.

Every pharmacy major needs to get this book.